Workspaces with no hierarchies in harmony with the architecture’s
transparency

This huge structure consists of four main buildings separated by two
bioclimatic glasshouses: triple-height glazed spaces featuring plenty of
landscaped areas, interaction places and horizontal/vertical linking systems
connecting the various buildings serving as offices.

The building’s original design dates back to 2001 and was aimed at
holding onto its industrial past by maintaining and modernising the building
shell, using the same building technology to recreate new parts that were
lacking and renovating the old structures by giving them a brand-new skin.

In 2011, the Prysmian Group, one of the world’s
leading companies in the manufacture of cables for the energy, telecommunications
and optic fibres industries, decided to present an extremely ambitious
conversion project for the area, which involved it being reused and renovated
to accommodate offices and laboratories.

Maurizio Varratta’s project involved dividing
up the built-on surface in a different way, freeing and hollowing out the
building’s bays: this cleaning-up process and the incorporating of glass roofs
allowed more effective use of sunlight. The materials it was built out of are
partly recycled and all recyclable.

Glasshouses

The most distinctive feature of the Prysmian
Group’s headquarters in Milan are the triple-height glasshouses connecting together
the office blocks. These fully-functional green ‘havens’ offer notable
advantages in terms of natural lighting, controlling the microclimate, and
overall energy efficiency.

Work spaces

DEGW’s consultancy on interior design, space planning and choice of
furniture interacts smoothly with the simple, minimal, high-tech architecture
designed by the Varratta firm, starting with the choice of materials: glass,
anodised aluminium, stainless steel and methacrylate. The deliberately austere
style of furniture is injected with plenty of colour in the informal areas and
glasshouses, where natural light really brings out the colour schemes. The building provided the chance to innovate
the basic work procedures.

The vast space - 12,000 m² of offices and 1,200 m² of glasshouses
(complete with ancillary areas) - were designed along the lines of smart
working for the approximately 600 staff. Most of the surface area is open space
(69%), even for executive management. The rest of the space is used for
ancillary purposes: meeting rooms (12%) and hubs (19%) or, in other words, the
full-height glasshouses linking together the three blocks and providing winter
gardens for hosting informal meetings.

Prysmian’s work procedures have truly been
revolutionised: previously only 6% of the corporate headquarters were designed
as open spaces; most of the company’s operations were carried out in enclosed
settings. Before carrying out the space planning and interior design project,
DEGW implemented workplace change management procedures in partnership with
Methodos. Every change is a process based around interaction that actively engages
the people who will live in the new spaces. DEGW gets people involved in the
changes and guides them around their new work environment, providing guidelines
for optimum use of the new spaces. DEGW considers workplace change management
to be a vital process in helping people deal with change. It provides the means
of developing a project based around people’s real needs so they can then be
shared by every level of the company in order to manage the impact of change on
people.